AWP Intro Journals Project

Nominate student work for the 2025 AWP Intro Journals Project!

The AWP Intro Journals Project is a literary competition for the discovery and publication of the best new works by students currently enrolled in AWP member programs. Program directors are invited to nominate students' works, which are selected for publication in participating literary journals, including Colorado Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Mid-American Review, Puerto del Sol, Quarterly West, Reed Magazine, and Tampa Review.

The judges will select four winners each for fiction and nonfiction, and eight for poetry. Each winner receives publication in a participating journal, a $100 honorarium, and promotional opportunities via AWP’s website and social media platforms.

Please read this page carefully, as submissions that do not follow the guidelines will be disqualified.

Eligibility Requirements

Both graduate and undergraduate student work is eligible. Each member program is free to devise its own method for nominating student work, but only students currently enrolled in AWP member programs may be nominated. Each program may submit one essay, one short story, and up to three poems. A student who has won in any given year is not eligible to be nominated for the next two years.

If your program does not have an active AWP membership but you would like to sign up, please email awp@awpwriter.org.

Guidelines

Nominations must be uploaded via our online submission portal between October 1 and November 30, 2024. Entries can be submitted by the program director or an admin, but they should all be submitted by one representative for the program. Submitters will be asked to provide the following:

1. The name of the program and its director
2. The name, contact info, and expected graduation date of each student being nominated
3. A separate file (Word doc or PDF) for each work being nominated; these files should NOT include the author’s name or any other identifying information.

Nominated works must be unpublished. The author or nominator must notify programs@awpwriter.org immediately in the case of acceptance elsewhere. Individual poems may be retracted from submissions of multiple poems.

Each program may nominate no more than one work of nonfiction, one work of short fiction, and three poems (poems do not have to be by the same author).

No submission may exceed 5,000 words. Prose must be double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman or similar, easy-to-read font.

Award

The judges will select four winners each for fiction and nonfiction, and eight for poetry. Each winner receives publication in a participating journal, a $100 honorarium, and promotional opportunities via AWP’s website and social media platforms.